Balancing Hope and Fear

Muslim Modernists, Democracy, and the Tyranny of the Majority

Bibliographic Data

ID2109324
AuthorsMegan Brankley Abbas (Colgate University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume65
Issue3
Pages643-669
Publication date2023-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417523000026
OpenAlexW4366990819
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited21

During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, many Muslim modernists exhibited mixed records regarding democracy. On the one hand, they articulated cogent arguments that Islam was, at its heart, democratic in nature and worked to counter Islamist claims to the contrary. Some crafted robust visions for Islamic democratic governance. On the other hand, many of the same modernists forged political alliances with military authoritarian regimes. How can we explain this seeming inconsistency between modernist democratic ideals and their not-so-democratic practices? This article argues that this paradoxical pattern stems from a classic dilemma within democratic theory: the tyranny of the majority. After providing a brief history of majoritarian fears in Western political theory, the article investigates two prominent case studies from mid-twentieth-century Pakistan and Indonesia. The first examines Fazlur Rahman's ties to Ayub Khan's military regime in 1960s Pakistan, and the second analyzes why a movement of young modernists was willing to collaborate with Suharto's New Order regime in 1970s Indonesia. Together, the two cases demonstrate that Muslim modernists balance their genuine hopes for an Islamic democratic future with persistent fears of majoritarian tyranny by advocating for constraints on the majority will. While these constraints can be controversial and even authoritarian in nature, they have important parallels in Western democratic thought. Ultimately, this article argues that Muslim modernists' mixed records are a function of democratic theory itself rather than some Islamic exception to it

Authoritarianism · Democracy · Dilemma · Epistemology · Islam · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · Asian Studies and History · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Philosophy

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